This book is all about kindness behaviour training (KBT). The authors have drawn on their clinical experience as well as Buddhism to develop a practical course in cultivating kindness, intended to complement and augment other mindfulness-based approaches. They are now presenting this training in an eight-week course book. Amid the recent explosion of secular mindfulness, their aim is to re-emphasize the importance of the heart, introducing the reader to a variety of ways of approaching kindness-based meditation, as well as to how to put kindness into practice in daily life.

A range of psychological theories and areas of research inform the KBT approach, primarily findings from cognitive neuroscience, as well as evolutionary and positive psychology literatures. It also uses a range of exercises found to be helpful in Eastern traditions, such as Buddhism. The KBT exercises have been isolated from their religious or spiritual origins and are used on a secular basis.

The book will act as a companion, walking the reader through each week of the course offering guidance, reflections, and outlining the exercises in a concise user-friendly style. Worksheets and homework tasks to be completed into the book for each week will make the book interactive and accessible. Led meditations will be available to be downloaded by a KBT website.

2 reviews for Mindful Emotion: A Short Course in Kindness (Paperback)

Rated 5 out of 5

Nicolas Soames –May 26, 2017

This is book is very timely. The spectacular growth of secular mindfulness for stress, pain, in business, and even ordinary life, has proved of considerable social benefit. Often, its Buddhist heritage has been acknowledged. But what is often missed in the teaching process is the crucial balancing counterpoint of kindness. Not something which would be omitted (one hopes) if taught within a Buddhist context, with the balancing meditation practices of mindfulness of breathing AND the mettā bhāvanā.

Mindful Emotion – A Short Course in Kindness sets out to correct this imbalance in a secular context and in the process the authors, Dr Paramabandhu Groves and Dr Jed Shamel, supported by their clinical backgrounds, have produced a measured and very useful book.

Curiously, everyone knows what kindness is, they know the feeling and the appropriateness of it as an action, and are sure they can implement it when necessary. But Groves and Shamel indicate that it is a quality that often slips past normal, everyday behaviour in word and deed and by bringing it into focus – making it the most prominent food on the plate, sotospeak – show that we must give it more specific attention. The strength of the book is that it gives practices, every bit as challenging as formal mindfulness, to increase our awareness and use of kindness.

The clue is in the sub-title: it is a course! A course in – here comes a new acronym – KBT: Kindness Behaviour Training. Not too sure of that, myself, but I suppose when moving into the territory of MBCT (Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy) or MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction), KBT just had to come.

This book is a course in KBT with the eight chapters laying out a progressive path in awareness of kindness, preparation of the ground, expanding the reach, and gradually facing greater challenges and difficulties. However, this is not just an academic exposition. The strength of the book is that it offers guided meditations, based on the standard mettā bhāvanā practice with its five stages – but adapted to attend to whatever particular topic is under scrutiny. In short, one is not just ‘learning about’ kindness, but invoking it, generating it, bringing it to life. There are ‘core meditations’ ‘bonus meditations’, ‘reflections’ and ‘written tasks’; the purpose of the authors is not so much to get their readers to jump on a bus and be carried to their destination, but to walk there themselves. There is a helpful internet-based audio download facility for guided meditations also.

Mindful Emotion will, I think, surprise many who think that kindness is too common an expression, and too readily accessible, to need any special work or attention. It certainly surprised me. And I found it particularly of interest in the adapted versions of the mettā practices in the context of progressively developing kindness.

Jinamitra

Rated 5 out of 5

quokkakat –June 27, 2017

I am very much enjoying (and benefiting from) the above book which I purchased from Manchester Buddhist Centre last month. I am very excited to be visiting the centre again when Paramabandhu is appearing there in a couple of weeks.

I appreciate enormously the free provision of the guided meditations online to supplement the book. I have downloaded the main meditations as a zip file onto my Phone so I can mediate whilst not in a Wifi zone. That is a true gift as it has made progressing through the book and augmenting my daily practice so much easier and I am confident I will finish the book. As a single mum with health problems, I’ve started many many books and logistics often make completing them tricky. This is a real life saver and I am not engaging in hyperbole here. Many thanks for publishing it.

Talks and Links

Endorsements

Mindful Emotion – A Short Course in Kindness is a stimulating guide and training program that uses the analogy of cultivating a garden that results in the finest flowers and fruits to illustrate the process of cultivating kindness toward others. A variety of secular-based mindfulness meditation instructions and thoughtful exercises support this process of creating a garden of kindness, which is what our world so badly needs right now. - Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, author of Good Karma: How to Create the Causes of Happiness and Avoid the Causes of Suffering

The last 20 years has seen research showing us that what motivates us also patterns our minds and bodies. While modern societies encourage self-focused competitiveness, ancient wisdoms point to the importance of caring, helping, supporting, kindness and compassion for self and others as the true path to happiness and well-being. This deeply informative book brings together secular science, ancient wisdoms and psychotherapeutic insights, in a series of steps and practices to cultivate kindness to self and others and thereby reap its benefits. Accessible and practical, this book will be of great benefit to many. -
Professor Paul Gilbert, PhD, FBPsS, OBE, author of The Compassionate Mind

Buy this book, read it, practise with it. It’s a wonderfully welcome addition to the body of work around mindfulness and compassion. It’s engaging; down-to-earth but uplifting; and very much to the point.
I’ll certainly be recommending it to all those who have attended my mindfulness classes. - Michael Chaskalson (Dharmachari Kulananda), author of Mindfulness in Eight Weeks

With the problems we face in today's world, kindness is more important than ever. In Mindful Emotion, the authors have produced a thorough and pragmatic guide to bringing mindfulness and kindness into our lives. It is an excellent book that I will be recommending to colleagues, clients, and friends. - Russell Kolts, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Eastern Washington University and author of CFT Made Simple: A Clinician's Guide to Practicing Compassion-Focused Therapy

The benefits of mindfulness are so much greater when they include a focus on kindness and compassion, both for ourselves and others. This book is a wonderful journey through the art and practice of mindful kindness – or as I like to call it, Kindfulness.
- Dr Mark Williamson, Director, Action for Happiness